An interview
An interview from a TV-show named "Artistspecial" I transcribed when I didn't have anything better to do. The show was broadcasted in Sweden straight after the release of the "Isobel"-single. Source: ZTV. Please note, the pictures hasn't got anything to do with the interview. They're just here to make your read more amusing.
-Björk: I think I'm half five years old and the other half of me is 50. But the side of me that's 50 is very private. And people don't see that side of me, cause actually I'm very organized, I'm very disciplined and I work very hard. I've always been that way since I was a kid and people don't see that side of me cause the 5-years-old is what I show the person that's outside, you know.
-Björk: Sugarcubes, number one was people. We liked each other and we
had a good time together and the music that came out of that relationship
was a bit of an accident. When I realized the Sugarcubes had become this
serious band-thing....eh....I started to realize that it was now or never.
If I didn't record all those songs I'd written in my head, then it would
never do it.
-Björk: "Debut" was very much for me like a virgin trying to express
herself, I mean a virgin musically. And that's why I named it "Debut". And
people who knew I had been around for many years just thought I was taking
a piss or something. But for me it was very much like the songs I had kept
in darkness and locked in my little diary, only to be seen by myself. The
first time they were out on there own and had to figure out how to survive
their own way.
-Björk: I think the biggest difference between "Debut" and....eh...."Post"
is that "Debut" was all the songs I wrote during ten years in my house on
Iceland after my son had gone to bed. They were very intimate, like little
experiments. It was like a diary, something that kept you sane rather than
you'd want to tell the whole world about it.
| Clip of "Army of me" |
|
-Björk: This album is on the contrary. I've moved from Iceland to England
and all the songs are written since then. So they're all written with in
mind that many people are going to hear them. They're not shy and introvert,
they're more sort of conscious and more....more confident.
-Björk: Because it's the girl who leaves home and tries out all these
brand new things she hasn't done before. Seeing new cities and meeting all
these lunatics. All the lunatics are like herself because there aren't that
many back on Iceland. She's figuring out there are more people out there
who feel like her. It's definitely a brave album but at the same time it's
a bit scaring. "Post" is more scaring than "Debut" cause I'm definitely jumping
off more cliffs this time.
| Clip of "Big time sensuality" |
|
-Björk: Most of Scandinavia exists for me like the children's stories I read when I grew up. It's obviously Pippi Longstocking and the Moomins from Finland and Thorbjörn Egners, you know Karius and Baktus. Well, at the moment I'm the Moomin-mother. Em....em....touring and doing this project I'm doing is very much like being like her. Being very understanding and always having a bag full of things. If someone breaks her favorite vas she just goes "Oh, I didn't like it anyway". Especially while touring, I'm very much like the Moomin-mother. But I think I used to be more of a Pippi Longstocking. I still am but I used to be more, especially as a teenager.
| Clip of "Venus as a boy" |
|
-Björk: All the things I do are by myself like from doing your lawyers
contracts to T-shirt-colors and album-covers. Travel-ways on tours, lights.
And I haven't mentioned things that obviously are closer. Like producing
or co-producing, picking the instruments, the studios, the engineers, arranging,
those things. So it's a very colorful job with a lot of people.
Clip of "Venus as a boy" continues
-Björk: In a funny way I love discipline very much. I used to think,
especially after being brought up by hippies and later becoming a punk, that
discipline was my biggest enemy. But then you realize very quickly especially
when you start recording that you want to do a good song and record it and
you want to do it in a very spontaneous way. The whole punk-scene was about
gathering everyone in a studio and just doing one take. Rehearsals didn't
exist because life isn't that way. You can't rehear for something, you just
have to do it once. But you realize very quickly that freedom and discipline
is the same thing. It's just two sides of the same coin. The more discipline
you have, the more freedom you have. That is if you have the right kind of
discipline.
-Björk: So the trick is very much to know what to have discipline about
and when to be open. So you go to the studio and you make decisions on half
of the things but not the other half. Cause it's very important to have the
courage to not make decisions on the other half.
-Interviewer: To trust other people?
-Björk: Yes. And to trust the day. That you will think of something
when it happens. You have to relax and let go, you know. So my job is very
much to organize an accident. In a way it's very much like hunting in the
forest. You put up traps somewhere for your animal. But you don't know where
it's going to run or how it's gonna behave. You can guess and that's how
you become a good organizator. You become a good guesser. But you can never
know. You will never know. And I will never know how to write a song cause
no two songs are the same. Unconsciously I try tot treat each song different.
There are no rules but I like it. I like it very much cause for me it's like
playing a game for myself. Surprise myself and sometimes the most predictable
can be the most surprising.
-Björk: I started to play in bands when I was 12 years old. Most of
the times I was the only girl but what's most important is to make a good
song. So if you want something like this you have to very quickly ignore
things like the food-taste of the other person. If he likes sausages and
you don't you can't let that stand in your way. And very quickly it goes
on like the clothes the person wears doesn't matter, the sex doesn't matter,
the raze doesn't matter, the age doesn't matter. I became completely like
"I don't want to know". I just want to work with this person so that 1+1
becomes 1. If you're lucky then it will continue all the way until what's
more impossible happens. 1+1 is 3. Then you have a song.
| Clip of "Violently happy" |
|
-Björk: So every time as a teenager when I played in bands and I was the only girl, then I could always hear someone say "Oh, but she's a girl". Then I knew I just could smell trouble. It doesn't stand in the way. You're just working with people, not with sex, age or raze. So one of the misconceptions people have about me is when they see me and sees a woman. "She can do this and she's a woman" or "She can't do this cause she's a woman". I just work with them for one or two days then they're forgotten. It's just the beginning-stage, you know.
| Clip of "Human behaviour" performed live |
|
-Björk: There are things that happened when you were a kid you'll never
forget. When I was about five years old and I played with some kids in my
neighborhood....I can't remember what it was but we were all doing something
together and we had such a great time and then all the other kids suddenly
said "We can't do this". And I was like "Why" and they said "You're not supposed
to". And I said "But we won't hurt anyone" and I just realized, it was such
a great feeling. Doing what you're supposed to do was like over here (she
points to the left) and doing what I wanted to do in my intuition was over
here (she points to the right) and there was a great canyon between them.
And it was like a cross-road. And I went over here (she points to the right)
and I've never regretted it. All I have is intuition. People don't understand
me. They're from over there (she points to the left) and they don't get it.
I still meet many of my old friends from school back on Iceland and they
go like "Now I understand you" and I'm like "OK". But it can be dangerous
cause I remember when I was on television when I was very pregnant. I was
19 with my stomach sticking out. And the Icelandic television had never got
so many complains. People called, wrote letters and were angry and one woman
got a heart-attack. So it can be dangerous to do what you want.
-Björk: Yeah, I'm very, very over-romantic and I very much believe in
relationships. But I don't think it's as simple as being husband and wife,
you know. I've got relationships with many people, like most of the people
on the album "Post". Like Tricky, Nellee Hooper, Marius the programmer, the
engineers and Graham Massey who wrote a song with me. My manger is a friend
since 12 years and the guy who drew the album-cover together with me is also
a friend for 8 years. These are all relationships I've got and they're very
important to me. But none two are the same, you know and that's very important.
I definitely believe there is something as meeting a person and being with
for the rest of your life. But I think people have to stop putting standards
to relationships. You can have a friend you sometimes feel erupted with,
a friend you never feel erupted with. You can have a friend who's very humorous,
a friend you're feeling strong with. You can have a friend you feel very
angry with and it feels good cause you're both angry together on the rest
of the world. You can have a friend you feel very childish with and all this
must exist cause everyone's got this inside. You can't stop and say "Oh,
this relationship is like this". No relationships are the same. No marriages
are the same, you know.
-Björk: If I hear one more person who comes up to me and complains about
"computer-music has no soul" then I will go furious, you know. Cause of course
the computer is just a tool. And if there is no soul in computer-music then
it's because nobody put it there and that's not the computers role. It's
the role of the songwriter. He puts down his soul in the song if he wants
to. A guitar will never write a song and a computer will never write a song.
These are just tools. And I think people were terrified in the beginning
of the century when the telephone was invented. They were like "People will
stop meeting each other and just talk in the phone all day" but that's ridiculous
cause nothing can replace a meeting with another person.
-Björk: You'll see, we'll win.
The show ends up with Björk drinking a cup of tea.